©Jason I. Stutz 2010

I first started writing “Pinocchio” around 2010.  After reading Carlos Collodi’s original, I felt I could add nothing to that masterpiece.  When I began to write it from my own perspective, it became very dark, very fast- so much so that I couldn’t stay with it.  I had to deepen.  Finally, in 2016 during a psychic-reading trade with a friend, it came up, again, and he encouraged me that I could conquer it.  Praise be to Holy Mother Mary for her guidance and musing.

Pinocchio- Final Draft.03.14.17

Pinocchio

By Jason I. Stutz

I am a partially hewn block, wondering where my sides, my rear, have gone. I want to be a whole block. Prayers work.

“Hello, God.”

“Hello, Pinocchio,” says He.

“Where are my sides, my rear?”

“They have been lopped off, Pinocchio. You are preparing to become a real boy. We had to shape you accordingly.”

Pinocchio gasped and his eyes grew wide as silver dollars. “Am I not real, already, Father?”

“No,” said He. “Not quite yet.”

Silence filled the room. And, for Pinocchio, at least, that silence ended the relationship for some time. Pinocchio was distraught. Poor doll– sweet, playful, pleasing doll. “What am I, if not a real boy?” his tears wet his wood, but a fairy, a blue, loving fairy came with his wish.

“Sweet doll, what made you cry so well?” Pinocchio could hardly speak, his voice broke on the knot in his throat, tears sprinkling his wooden hands, his wooden legs and his wooden feet.

“I want to be a real boy!!!” he cried out, blubbering from his belly, thrashing his arms and legs, bent over himself on the floor.

“I understand you are distressed. You may become a real boy, Pinocchio. But you must go to school each morning and come home at night and learn what it means to be a real boy. You must be kind and thoughtful of others and help your father, the puppet maker, in his shop, learning how he makes not-real boys like you are now. Only then can you become a real boy.”

Pinocchio swore he would do all those things, though in his heart he knew not what it meant to do them, and he doubted he could even find the school, or that they would even admit him. But, he found his father, the puppet maker asleep in his studio, a large flame slowly melting the candle which gave him light to see by. His little round spectacles tilted nearly off of his nose and a sweet sounding snore gave through with his breath.

“Poppa!” said Pinocchio. “Please wake up!” And the sweet, oldish man mumbled something unintelligible and curiously lifted one of his eyelids to see about his interlocutor. “Yes, Pinocchio, lad? What is it, this dire question so late at night? He-he! It’s past your bedtime, you know!” he said with a wink.

“Poppa, I know I’m not a real boy. God and the Blue Fairy told me.” The puppet maker’s face became soft and concerned. He had lied to Pinocchio since he first made him two and a half weeks ago that he was a real boy, his very son. He saw the distress his little “innocent” lie created for Pinocchio.

Pinocchio was so frightened and dismayed, standing there nakedly before his father, that suddenly he wet his little doll pants. Some papers of designs of other puppets on the puppet maker’s table were ruined. The puppet maker was angry because they were important papers and he smacked Pinocchio across the room. Pinocchio hit the wall face-forward and his round nose popped off from the impact. He hit the floor with a dull, but frightening “thuck!” Something along with his nose snapped in Pinocchio’s heart. In disbelief of reality at all, he became very wroth and cursed his often kindly creator, the puppet maker. The puppet maker saw what he did to the doll and shook his head at Pinocchio in amazement.

Pinocchio snuck out of the room and went to his wood and satin bed, made by the puppet maker the following day after he himself was hewn. Pinocchio lay down and in the quiet of his own mind tried to think. But…nothing. No sound crossed his mind, no idea, nor any voice spoken or heard. Nothing– only the sound of a round, wood ball laying on a firm pillow and his awareness of the room around him.

Pinocchio thought, “I will never be real. I don’t even want to be real. It probably sucks being real, having to go to school and doing work and being a suck-up to the puppet maker.”

In the back of his mind, however, a little, high voice rang just barely in the range of his hearing, “Don’t give up, Pinocchio! Never give up! You can be a real boy!” Pinocchio was not in a good frame of mind- the Blue Fairy did not forsee him wetting his pants on the puppet maker’s papers and breaking his nose on the wall. Pinocchio turned his head to the bedpost above him to see a little, bold cricket there in a top hat with cane, gazing happily upon Pinocchio as he lay.

“How can I be a real boy, Cricket? And what do you know about being a real boy, anyway? You are a cricket?”

“Oh, I’ve known many a real boy in my time. Helped many of them get on the path, myself!”

“Pish,” said Pinocchio.

“See? You are real. Could a not-real boy say “pish?”

“Who cares, “ said Pinocchio, obviously not buying into the program.

The cricket bounced onto Pinocchio’s satin-shirted chest. “Now you hear me, child! You are going to go to school tomorrow and you will see for yourself that you can be a real boy!”

Pinocchio was startled and awed. The following morning, he ate breakfast in silence with the puppet maker who then outfitted him for “school.” “Come home straight away after “school,” Pinocchio! I need some help in the shop!” Pinocchio glared at the man like he was a fool and hated him. Pinocchio was not in a good frame of mind. But he went out the door and began the walk with the other children to the schoolhouse down the road. His back pack annoyed him because there was nothing in it, only a little wooden board the puppet maker amusedly placed in it and a piece of lead from his art scraps. He shuffled onward, not knowing why.

As he was about to turn onto the path toward school, a fox and a cat were walking behind him and caught him with their longer strides. They seemed rather purposeful and he admired them for seeming so busy. Pinocchio did not even know what he would do in school and the whole thing seemed very foggy in his wooded mind. “Are you real boys?” Pinocchio asked, eyes wide and trusting. The fox and the cat looked at each other, not sure yet what to answer. “N-no-o-o-o. No-o-o,” said the cat. “And who wants to be a boy, an-y-way,” said the fox. “But God and the Blue Fairy said that I would be a real boy if I went to school… um… if I… (he was obviously searching) helped my father in the shop, and… KIND!! If I were kind to those who need me.”

The fox and the cat both stayed silent for a second, not sure what to say, until they both eyed each other conspiratorially and laughed, mocking Pinocchio and slapping him hard on the back til he fell over himself. “Come with us, kid, we’ll show you a good time. You care about stew-w-pid things like readin and ritin and rithmuhtic? Those slaves spend all day listening to the boring noise of their teacher’s voice and the poor wimps go home at night only to be treated like slaves again by their parents.”

Pinocchio was very confused. He had been angry at his father, the puppet maker, at God for telling him he wasn’t real (yet), and the cricket for being so dumb and positive sounding ( though, never was he angry at the Blue Fairy, who he loved and hoped for with all his heart), but he did not “know” that they all had been wrong, that being a real boy was the worst thing that could happen to him, that going to school would dull his mind, not awaken it, or that his father cared only for himself against Pinocchio’s will and would never see the real him or treat him fairly. Pinocchio looked squarely at the fox and cat in their shifty, black eyes and said, “Where are you taking me??” fake-cheerfully, but really terribly afraid at what they would do. Pinocchio hated himself.

The fox and the cat each grabbed him by one arm and briskly walked him toward the woods away from the road that turned to go to the school. Pinocchio caught a glimpse of the school house in the distance; it was brick and had a warm feeling about it. He felt terribly alone, all of a sudden. An owl, the last owl still awake after carousing for mice all through the night, hooted a final call over their heads as they ducked under branches and slid past the fences of the town. “Where are you taking me?!” said Pinocchio, trying to sound enthusiastic to hide that he was afraid, terribly afraid. The forest shadows thickened as they walked briskly, dragging his arms so that his feet hardly touched the ground. They moved forward toward the Forgotten Town. Smoke from garbage fires rose in the distance. A lone whistle shot out, and he could hear the sound, after it, of wild, maniacal laughter… the harsh laughter of boys whose mothers did not love them- of boys who now taught each other what love is and were errant and mean. Secretly, Pinocchio wondered, “Is that the sound of real boys??” The Blue Fairy witnessed, gratefully, his continual desire to be a real boy and silently watched as he entered the Forgotten Town.

His mean companions nearly pulled apart his wires from their hooked hinges on his arms and had their way with him as they laughed mean laughs and pushed him to and fro. He was very anxious, but they all seemed to be having a good time, so he played right along and tried to act like it was fun, being pushed and pulled upon. His shoulders hurt and the wires started to stretch out. His wooden arms hung oddly, misaligned on his body. His left hand almost reached his knee and his right arm was bent backwards. But he could still use them, so he thought he was fine. The little boys with menacing faces crowded around him. “This is Pinocchio!” said the fox, with a laugh, as though he was gifting a rabbit to a pack of wolves. “Pinocchio!! Pinocchio!!” yelled the boys, menacingly.

The Blue Fairy gave Pinocchio her vision, through which he saw that each of these boys acted not on his own will, but for the approval of the other boys- so that there was no true leader. Even the older boys who told the others what to do were acting on the same impulse- so that the other older boys would admire them for being cruel and careless and in charge. Pinocchio loved them, for how could he not, seeing them as they truly are. He saw the need for love in each boy gnawing away at them as though pangs from hunger. He saw the so-called love they gave each other, as from some former agreement each of them had forgotten being made. But they broke their skin and bled for this bond.

The Blue Fairy looked down and wished she could be mother to each… if only they would have her. “Maybe Pinocchio will have me,” she imagined- but also, surprised in herself, she imagined him off at work and coming home to her. She was wanting not only to be his mother, but his true love. Her heart ached seeing  him in such a terrible place with terrible boys. She suddenly hated the other boys who threatened Pinocchio so that even his very arms were being torn from him by them. And Pinocchio felt this hatred, but in his innocence, he went to protect the boys against the hate and threw himself even deeper under their power. ‘If these are real boys, then I want to be like them!”

The Blue Fairy shuddered, and felt very sad at what she did. God shone a light in her to show her that He agreed that she had erred, to remind her that hate never produces love. She went away, to save her heart from breaking upon this scene, and to look within herself to eradicate the hate that bore out of her. She wept. And God listened to the music of her tears falling on the Earth. And they danced, God and she, in this way for some time. A loving and loving and loving embrace.

“Hey, kid. Ever smoked a cee-gar before?” said the fox belligerently. Holding out a fat, rolled leaf of dried tobacco, he struck a match against an oily tree. “No-o-o,” Pinocchio admitted with his neck reached forward and his eyes widened in sight of the big flame like a person hypnotized. The fox lit the cigar in his mouth and began to smoke big plumes of grey smoke, into his lungs and out through his nose, a few times. He seemed to be really enjoying it. ‘Here ya go, kid,” the fox shoved the cigar in Pinocchio’s mouth and told him, laughing coarsely, to “Breathe.” Pinocchio coughed and coughed and coughed and everybody laughed and laughed and laughed so that Pinocchio thought they were having a good time! He smiled awkwardly like a little boy and took another breath of cigar smoke. “Cough, cough, cough!!” The boys continued to laugh, so he figured everything was alright. And he started to feel very woozy and lightheaded and he walked around kind of turning on each foot not really going in any one direction. He started to laugh, himself, and he heard himself laughing, so he figured everything was alright. Then his own laughter became indistinguishable from the other boys and they all walked off toward the game room. The cricket shouted in the back of Pinocchio’s head, “Get out of there!” over and over and over again, but Pinocchio could only think to say, “Why? Silly,cricket. Everything’s great!”

“Pinocchio, get out of there!!!” yelled the cricket. Pinocchio began to feel annoyed at the cricket because he thought he liked the boys. The next time the cricket yelled to get out, Pinocchio smacked him to a tree just like his father did to him and killed his little cricket body. “I’m sorry, Pinocchio!” he heard the cricket say with his last breath. Pinocchio was very scared at what he did. The cricket was only ever nice to him. Maybe the cricket was trying to warn him about something,’ he thought to himself as he walked, pulled by the boys by his now nearly amputated arms. But the tobacco smoke swam in his brain and the laughter of the boys rang so loud in his ears, “Good job, Pinocchio! That cricket had it coming! Now come on!” and with a yank his right arm came undone from it’s hooks, and all the boys laughed and laughed, and Pinocchio began to wonder if everything wasn’t exactly alright after all. “Don’t worry about your arm, kid,” said the cat with a menacing grin. “You don’t need it.” Pinocchio’s head was swimming so much that he half-accepted that as truth. The Blue Fairy knelt and prayed on the soft grass, still wet with morning dew.

In the gaming room some other boys were there playing cards around a table, smoking cigars just like the one he had. These boys seemed a little different, a little confused… somehow sweeter. “Come and play poker,” one said, sheepishly. It seemed he didn’t really know why he was playing poker other than that’s what boys do in the Forgotten Town. “Boys in the Forgotten Town play poker, smoke cee-gars, and play wild games to prove how wild they are.” This boy saw that Pinocchio was new and had an arm missing. He sunk his face low to Pinocchio, “Don’t you have a mother? Boys in the Forgotten Town haven’t ever been loved, so we care for each other. Seems like you haven’t a mother, cause you don’t have an arm.” Pinocchio was very surprised to hear what the boy said. “I… I have a father,” said Pinocchio. “He made me of wood, but told me I am real. Then, God told me I am not real, and the Blue Fairy told me I could be if I went to school. But these boys told me I wouldn’t become real if I went to school, and that my father only wanted me to work so that he didn’t have to. That’s why I’m here.” Pinocchio did not sound very convincing that moment.

The boy’s eyes widened and a beam of hope hit Pinocchio’s chest from his chest, “You had a father who loved you, and a God who spoke to you, and a Blue Fairy to tell you what to do?” “Yeah, I guess,” said Pinocchio, becoming uncomfortable, looking at all the wild boys around him.

“What are you two f-a-i-r-i-e-s talking about, huh?? Play some poker!” And with this request, Pinocchio, helpless to make up his own mind, sat down and brought a hand of cards to his face, not knowing why or what for. “Smack ‘em down!” yelled a wild boy, and without knowing why, Pinocchio smacked down his hand of playing cards face up on the table. “Nothin’!” yelled a wild boy. “Pinocchio’s got nuthin’!! Nuthin’! Nuthin’!” and everyone laughed, as the first hoary fur that would, throughout the day, grow into donkey ears, grew up out the sides of his little, round head. Finally, about sunset, as all the boys were out of their minds laughing and yelling and playing poker, Pinocchio heard himself baying- a sound very unlike the voice he had known to come from his mouth these two weeks since his father, the puppet maker, made him out of wood, brass, and satin. He looked down at his body and his little heart jolted to find it was covered in grey fur and he had black hooves where his hands and feet were. He looked around and all the other boys he was playing poker with also had turned into donkeys. He tried to cry out but his voice would only bay, louder and louder with each degree of distress he felt. He began to jump up and kick because maybe he could shake himself out of the body of the donkey who ate him. He jumped and kicked and bayed and cried and cried and cried!! He smashed the table and chairs and knocked three wild boys in the teeth, gut, and butt (respectively) (they moaned and each could only barely muster up the courage to laugh, as they had been encouraged by each other to do).

Pinocchio was wild. He busted through the wooden door of the poker room and bounded out, out, out into the Forgotten Town, out toward the trees and the forest that separated him from his home. Bounding and bounding out and out and out until he collapsed under a tree. There was only a sliver of sunlight left in the sky. He heaved terrible bays from his chest, desperate, “Hee-haww! Hee-haww!! Hee-haww!!” An owl stood above him, curious and calm, “Hoot!”

Here, descended the Blue Fairy, who’s heart was also revolted, and cried out to the donkey. “Pinocchio! Where are you, Pinocchio!! Can you tell me who took my Pinocchio?!” Pinocchio the donkey, hearing her voice, bayed even louder and bounded upon her, but she became afraid for a moment and hid behind a tree. “Bayy! Baaayyyy! Bayyyy!” cried Pinocchio the donkey. Eventually, the Blue Fairy, with a little help from God, understood.

“Oh, Pinocchio! What have you done?? You listened to those mean boys, only concerned with their own pleasure, and forgot everything I told you. Now, look at you.” “Hee-haww. Hee-haww,” said Pinocchio, not the least bit comforted… well, maybe a little bit. He loved the Blue Fairy.

“I’ll give you one more chance to become a real boy. But you must go to school each day and come home at night and learn what it is to be a real boy! You must be kind and thoughtful of others and help your father the puppet maker in his shop, learning how he makes not-real boys like you are now. Only then can you become a real boy.” Pinocchio agreed and said he would do everything that she asked. He had already transformed back into his old, wooden self. Hearing the sound of his own voice, he knelt at her feet and cried and thanked her. The Blue Fairy, quite a bit pleased and humbled, laughed a little sweetly and offered her hand as they walked through the woods together, home… home.

Pinocchio’s father, the puppet maker, would be very “upset.”

III. ‘B’ as in Boy

“Pinocchio, where have you been!” winked his father, the puppet maker. “Have you been off on an adventure? What, didn’t you learn anything in “school”?” Pinocchio looked down at his feet and frowned. “I’ll go to school tomorrow, father. I promise.” His father laughed a merry laugh. “Of course you will!” and he laughed again. Soon, his right arm was wired back to it’s hook and his joints were made straight, again. “Must’ve had a tussle with one of the neighborhood cats,” said he, concerned, smiling gently.

There was something strange in his father’s tone, as though he didn’t believe Pinocchio was to go to school, anyway. Pinocchio remembered the little back pack his father had given him, and the little wooden board and piece of lead to write with. Maybe he’d learn to read and write and do arithmetic tomorrow, just like the fox and the cat told him not to do. But why did his father think it so funny? The Blue Fairy became nervous, and thought to God about what to do. “Pinocchio, your father thinks he is only playing make-believe with you. He created you, but he doesn’t know that you could be real. In becoming real, yourself, you help your father to see that you are real.” Pinocchio was very dismayed. Again, his little mind cracked. In fact, he became so enraged that he hit his round, wooden head on the bedpost and a crack grew into it above his right eye. He did not speak, to God, to the Blue Fairy, or even to himself, for the entire night. If not even his own father who made him out of wood believed he would become a real boy, then how could he ever be real??

His mind raced… how can I make myself real? No one else will do it for me! I’ll make myself real! But, his heart breaking, he knew not how. He ran to his father’s shop. He pulled his little body up on to the wooden stool and reached up onto the desk to find the tool that hewed him- a wood carving knife. It sunk lightly into his wooden flesh, “Thunk.” Amazed, curious, he did it again, “Thunk.” He liked the feeling of it sticking to the wood on his body. “Thunk.” He felt no pain.

“Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.” It made him feel his unreality. He was only a wooden doll. “Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.”

The following morning, Pinocchio, remembering his promise to the Blue Fairy, got up to go to school. He put on his little fake backpack with the little fake writing board and piece of lead inside. “Everything is fake,” Pinocchio cursed. But, he also broke off the blade of the wood carving knife and hid it, too, in his backpack. “This, alone, is real,” he thought. “This is what made me, not the puppet maker. I’ll make myself real with it.” The puppet maker, his father, looked curiously at Pinocchio for a moment and sent him on his way to “school.” “”School!”” Pinocchio said sarcastically, with total disrespect for everything in the world. He walked out the door as he did yesterday and got on the road with the other children to walk to school.

The large, brick schoolhouse shown bright, as he, today, unlike yesterday, turned down the road toward it. The children beside him talked to each other and sounded like birds and bells, Pinocchio thought. He hid his rage inside himself, remembering the wood carving blade in his backpack. He could never be like them, he thought. But, were they, too, learning to be real? He ran up beside one of the children and stuck them with the blade in the thigh. He shrieked loudly and looked around with tears in his eyes, but Pinocchio was much smaller and went unseen. Pinocchio felt bad. He didn’t want to hurt the boy. But, now he knew that boy was real, and probably all the other children were, too. So, if they weren’t learning to be real, what were they doing here? Maybe they were all in an upper class and had already become real… and were only learning to be more real, now. He gave them the benefit of the doubt. But, to his eyes, he did not see another like him, made of wood and satin and brass alone.

Entering through the gaping door of the brick schoolhouse the first time, Pinocchio gasped a full breath in and he felt awe. Before him, all the children found their classrooms and soon the hallway was empty. Only the sound of his wooden feet on the wooden floor. Finally, a little girl came in, late, and said, “Come to class, we’re late!” So he followed her and sat near to her in the back of the class. She hoped the teacher would not notice, but he did. “Young lady, please be on time tomorrow! And what have you got with you, there?” he scolded affectionately, eyeing Pinocchio suspiciously. The teacher noticeably laughed to himself. Pinocchio was beginning to despise laughter, and felt it was the indicator for everything fake. Pinocchio grew very anxious as the teacher approached the back of the classroom, with his long legs gliding methodically toward the little girl, he then, turning, placed his hand on Pinocchio’s head and lifted him to his face. The teacher’s large face, his sparkling, bespectacled eyes beamed laughingly into Pinocchio’s eyes. Pinocchio liked him, but hated himself, but liked him, but hated himself. Wordlessly, the teacher placed him back down gently into the chair and patted the little girl affectionately on the head. “He can stay,” said the teacher. Pinocchio was amazed: he would learn to be a real boy. He bowed his head to the desk in gratitude, “Pock!”

The teacher drew attention to his writing board and began to show the children how to write the alphabet. Pinocchio had heard about the alphabet from his father, the puppet maker, once when he was told what would be taught in “school.” He became very interested. “This is an ‘A.” Apples, aardvarks, and ants all are things that start with the letter, ‘A.” Pinocchio said the name of the letter in his mind, “A.” When he did this, he realized that for the first time, he heard a voice inside of his head. He had a thought. “That must have been my voice in my mind saying that.” He said it again, “A.” He became so very excited that he forgot to listen to what the teacher said next. Suddenly, the children were moving around the room and he didn’t know why. He began to panic. But they all went back to their seats, now with pads of paper and lead pencils. He remembered the only objects his father the puppet maker put into his backpack, the little wooden board and piece of lead. Reaching in to pull them out of his backpack, he saw the woodcarving blade there alongside with them and felt terrible, mixed feelings. He remembered how angry he was. But, how lucky that his father had put precisely those two items in his backpack. Maybe his father was very wise.

He wrote on the little board with the little piece of lead just as the teacher had shown the children, “A.” “Very good, lad,” the teacher said to him with a wink. Pinocchio was not aware he was being watched. “That’s a very good ‘A.’” Pinocchio felt very proud. Not only did he have a thought and hear his own voice in his own mind, but the teacher of the entire class told him that he had drawn a very good ‘A.’ He could only stare at the teacher, who, pleased with himself, continued to walk around the room, giving compliments to the children. When he got to the little girl, he said, “And a special gold star for you, young lady, for not only learning how to write the letter ‘A’ yourself, but writing it for the little boy, our newest student.”

The little girl moved her legs and hips in her chair, feeling amused but not understanding what the teacher meant, although she gladly accepted the gold star. Pinocchio was rather upset, however, as he had clearly made that ‘A’ all by himself, and the compliment the teacher gave him was now revealed to be a joke, to say the least.

The little girl, curious, peaked over onto Pinocchio’s writing board as he had been staring at it for many long moments. “How did you write that? You are not a real boy,” she whispered. Pinocchio, feeling emboldened, turned his head and told her that in fact he is a real boy! He felt very proud when he said that. But the little girl was amazed. “You are the best doll I’ve ever seen. I want to take you home and show you to my daddy,” and she gave out a small shriek of pleasure so that the teacher began to feel a little suspicious.

“Stay with the class, young lady,” he said. Next, I’m going to show you the letter ‘B.” Can anyone tell me what things start with the letter ‘B?’ No one raised their hand, but Pinocchio was suddenly intensely interested. The teacher gave way, “Bananas, boxes, and…?” Pinocchio’s eyes grew wide and his ears grew as big as the town. “Boys!!” Pinocchio felt he was shot in the center of his brain (B, brain) with the letter ‘B.’

“B,” Pinocchio said to himself, in his own mind, with an inner voice he was beginning to recognize as his own. “B.” And what he said in his own mind with his own voice, next, charged him with a powerful electricity flowing up and down his entire body, “Boy,” he said, in his own mind, with his own inner voice. “Boy. I am a “Boy,” he said, with his voice in his mind. “A Boy. “B.””

He wrote it on the little wooden board aside the letter ‘A.’ “B,” he wrote, just as the teacher showed them. “Good job,” said the teacher, peering over Pinocchio’s shoulder, again. But Pinocchio, unfortunately, didn’t believe him, and therefor became confused and angry once again. He always becomes angry when adults lie. It hurts him very badly. God looked down upon Pinocchio and told him that, indeed, he did a very good job writing not only the ‘A,’ but the ‘B,’ as well. But Pinocchio didn’t hear him; he was too full of anger and pride so that his mind was preoccupied where God’s voice would have been heard. The teacher thought the little girl wrote his ‘A’ and his ‘B.’ Pinocchio grew angrier and angrier the more he thought about it.

Something strange began to happen, then. His little body began to tremble and his limbs fell one by one onto the floor. He looked out through the eyes of his little round head as his arms and legs fell all around him, disconnected. The little girl screamed and some boys laughed when they saw Pinocchio so helpless. “Do not laugh at another’s misfortune, children. Young lady, perhaps he should stay at home on your bed tomorrow?” The little girl was very pleased to be given the doll, and she was very curious, indeed, at how he had written the ‘A’ and the ‘B’ by himself.

But Pinocchio was very frightened. The little girl gleefully shoved him, limb by limb and head and body, into her school bag. “Where are you taking me?” he said to the little girl, very upset that he would not be able to return to school tomorrow. He learned to write an “A” and a “B” and would have learned even more if his stupid limbs hadn’t fallen off. The rest of the class was difficult to hear, as his ears were up against things in the girl’s schoolbag. Eventually, Pinocchio heard the school bell ring and the sound of childrens’ voices shouting out to each other. The little girl lifted him in her bag and walked outside.

The little girl made sure that she walked alone on the road, cleverly avoiding the other children who might want to ask her about “her doll.” When she was out of ear shot of other children, she spoke directly to Pinocchio. “How did you write the letters yourself?” she asked Pinocchio conspiratorially. Pinocchio was excited to be spoken to by her, but still quite upset at what had happened after he wrote the letter, “B.” “The teacher thought that you did it for me but I did it myself! Now I’m all in pieces and will not be able to return to school so that I can become a real boy,” he said in a muffled voice through the canvas bag. “Yes, doll, that might be difficult,” she said, conniving something in her mind. “The teacher asked that you not return and you should stay on my bed tomorrow. But daddy will want to see you. He’s a carnival barker and a very great puppeteer. I bet he’s not ever seen a doll like you!”

Pinocchio felt a wave of helplessness overtake him. He prayed out of the little depths of his heart that someone might save him. The cricket came, in spirit form (as he was dead, as Pinocchio had killed him with a swat of his hand). The cricket said, “Pinocchio, you are not alone. I am always in earshot of your voice. And you are learning how to speak in your mind. God can hear that voice, too. You must be very pure of heart to make it home. Be not prideful or angry, but look at how you might be able to help others. Only then can you make it home.”

“Damned cricket! I am the one who needs help, Cricket!”  Although he had begun to think and speak in his own mind with his own voice, he hadn’t yet learned to love himself as he is whether others approve of him or not. “You will be guided by the goodness of your will, Pinocchio.” With that, the cricket disappeared.

“Who are you talking to, doll?” asked the little girl. “Nobody, now,” said Pinocchio, his eyes rolling back in his head. He was beginning to grieve for his life. His little wooden torso gave a heaving sigh.

The Carnival Barker

“Daddy, daddy! Look, daddy! Look what I found at school today!” she shouted from the yard. And, to Pinocchio, “You are a special doll. You can speak and write all by yourself- and if you can write, what else can you do? Daddy is going to be amazed!”

“What did you learn in school today, my sweet girl?” called a booming voice from another room. “Daddy! Look!” As he craned his large, mustachioed face around the door to the room, she reached into her bag and pulled out… a foot. “Whataya showing me, my sweet?” Surprised, she reached again and found another limb, and another, and the torso. Pinocchio’s head was very anxious at this revealing. What would her father the puppeteer say about him, a puppet? Finally, he felt her anxious hand on his head and she pulled him out of the bag (bumping his broken nose against a ruler). Pinocchio was very dizzy and the image of the room felt like a ship tossed in the waves at sea. Gradually his eyes adjusted and he was confronted with the puppeteer’s large, mustachioed face gazing back at him. He smelled the garlic on his breath. “That’s a very interesting doll, sweetheart. What can he do? He is all broken in pieces. Why have you brought it home? I have plenty of puppets, sweetheart.” “But, Daddy! He can speak! And he wrote all by himself on the writing board in his backpack an ‘A’ and a ‘B.’ See?”

Her father laughed a hearty laugh. “Well, that’s very good, my brilliant young daughter! You learned to write!” And he picked her up by the armpits and danced her around the room. She shrieked and shrieked with pleasure. But, Pinocchio couldn’t have a minute more of the charade. “I wrote it!” Pinocchio shouted (as loud a shout as could come from only a head).

The puppeteer stopped immediately, amazed, and lowered his daughter till her feet softly landed on the floor. “What say you, doll?” asked the puppeteer, now intensely interested in Pinocchio’s unheard of talents. “A doll who can speak and write?” he said to himself, laughing amazedly. “How can it be?” The puppeteer’s face was inches from Pinocchio’s, and his eyes traced every feature.

“Of course I can speak and write!” yelled Pinocchio in the puppeteer’s face. “I’m a real boy!” and Pinocchio, saying this, began to weep uncontrollably. As though coming to himself, the puppeteer burst out in laughter, as loud as Pinocchio’s young ears had ever heard. “Of course you are!! Of course you are!! To the workshop!” and the puppeteer scooped up Pinocchio in all his pieces and put him gently back together. Pinocchio was feeling, at least for now, a lot better. And they seemed to admire him for all that he could do.

“Perhaps writing and speaking wasn’t a greater talent than most real boys have, but,” Pinocchio thought to himself, uncertain, “but I’m not a boy! I’m a puppet!”

“How lucky!” said the little girl to her father. Pinocchio felt increasingly proud, as though cotton candy pushed out his chest from within. His own father, the puppet maker, never said anything about how lucky he felt that Pinocchio could speak to him. Maybe he was worth more than his father could tell? Maybe he was special and maybe becoming real would only diminish all these special talents he has, now, as a doll who can speak and also write the letters ‘A’ and ‘B.’ “’A’ as in ‘Apple,’ ‘Aardvark,’ and ‘Ant,’” he said, mantra-like. And ‘B!’” but, suddenly, he remembered. “’B,’” he said to himself with is own voice in his own mind. “’B’ as in, ‘Boy.’” And on these words he choked from grief, “I am a Boy.”

God reached down a loving ear, the spirit of the Cricket cooed a happy thought, and the Blue Fairy watched achingly from above. “Yes, Pinocchio,” said God, who Pinocchio could only sort of hear because he was very angry, still, at God. “You are a wonderful boy, Pinocchio!,” said the Cricket, who Pinocchio reflexively disdained still, because he was always so happy- but just this once, Pinocchio looked sidewise at the Cricket and gave him a glance of appreciation.

Outside, the puppeteer, who was also the carnival barker, set up his wagon to reveal the puppet theater it was built to become. “I love you, Daddy!” said the little girl to her father, the carnival barker. “Oh, I love you, my sweet little girl!” he said, wrapping his huge arms and barrel chest around her just enough that he could squeeze her without making her stop breathing. “Eeeee!” she shrieked with pleasure. “I love you! I love you! I love you!” kissing his ruddy cheek each time she said it.

The wagon was a little run down. Much of the velvet he initially dressed it with was becoming shabby-looking. It appeared he did only enough to make it presentable, but he could rely on the darkness of night and his talents as a puppeteer to attract an audience. Tonight, he thought, he would not have to worry about his work, as it was all on the living doll, Pinocchio.

“What is your best quality?” he asked Pinocchio dreamily, cooing seductively, hovering his face over Pinocchio. “My best quality?” Pinocchio was amazed. No one had ever asked him that before. He didn’t even know he had a quality to begin with. “Well, I’m made of wood, I guess. It’s not bad wood. My father the puppet maker is very skilled.” Pinocchio was not, at that moment, seeing that he could be a real boy. “You’re… father… the puppet maker,” said the Carnival Barker, leveling his eyes upon the doll, making a mental note. He went to the manager’s office to use the telephone, and asked the operator if there are any puppet makers in the “Town Remembered” school district.

Pinocchio continued to ponder what his best quality is, however. God, several times, tried to show him when it seemed Pinocchio’s ears were open, but Pinocchio’s mind was swimming in all directions! God tried to tell him that being a real boy is his best quality, even though he wasn’t entirely real… yet, but still. Instead, Pinocchio’s “best qualities” were “I have a very round head,” “my legs are very squarish,” and “I am very special because, it seems, I am the only known puppet who can write the letters ‘A’ and ‘B’ without any help.” And he would be very jealous if another puppet came along to cast its shadow on his spotlight.

The carnival barker returned, seeming distracted. After fumbling with some stage props for the show, he cast his eye upon Pinocchio, again. “O-kay! Pinocchio, the star of the show!!” he said robustly. Pinocchio perked up, his broken off nose pointing at the puppeteer who would teach him what it meant to be a “star.” “Have you thought about what your best quality is, Pinocchio?” Pinocchio, ready to answer, blurted out, against his better judgement, “I can write ‘A’ and ‘B’ by myself!” The puppeteer seemed unimpressed and grumbled a little bit to himself. Pinocchio’s face drooped, sensing the puppeteer’s disappointment.

Suddenly, a something- a spirit, a feeling- entered, like a wave of energy, into the puppeteer’s wagon where they sat, surrounded by other puppets and props. The puppeteer noticeably cocked his head to his right shoulder, as one might do when listening to his better angel, and the spirit spoke to him there. But the puppeteer didn’t like what the spirit said and grimaced as one who had just tasted something very sour. So he turned his head to his left shoulder and listened. The better angel deftly convinced his worser angle the greedy benefits of his loving plan. Thus, the puppeteer jolted like lightning with his finger in the air, “You can teach the audience what it means to be a real boy!”

Pinocchio had many mixed emotions. He was, instantly, extremely proud. He remembered how beautiful the teacher at the schoolhouse looked as he commandingly prowled around the classroom, giving compliments to his students on their work. But, he also remembered feeling angry that the teacher mocked him and believed he couldn’t have written the ‘A’ and the ‘B’ (“‘Boy’ begins with ‘B’,” he remembered. “I am a Boy,” (and the electricity of his “I” filled him anew)) by himself. “But I did,” knew Pinocchio, feeling energized, but also very, very confused. He turned to the puppeteer, and without knowing why, he put out his little wooden hand to the puppeteer. The puppeteer laughed a maniacal laugh that frightened the doll deeply and put his hand on Pinocchio’s and shook it to seal the agreement. Pinocchio smiled wonderously, “I am a real boy, now. I can teach others!”

The stage was set for Pinocchio’s big debut. The puppeteer had his greedy plans all laid out and in his scheming mind, all the wheels were spinning feverishly. The spirit who gave him this plan stood watching coldly with his arms folded across his chest. If the spirit wished, he could destroy the puppet theater with a single thought from his brilliant, powerful mind. But God spoke to the spirt and prayed in the spirit’s heart, reminding him that Pinocchio must find his way to Him of his own desire, not by force. The spirit, for a moment absorbed in loving unity with God, curled up in God’s lap like a cat and cooed, his face turning to God’s face beaming down upon him.

The puppeteer in solemn ceremony placed his tall, carnival barker hat upon his head and let the long tails of his red coat wave gracefully behind him. Pinocchio was becoming increasingly anxious inside himself. “Am I a real boy??” he asked, over and over inside himself with increasing urgency. He could not tell. He felt, in himself, that he was only beginning to learn what it was to be a real boy. The words of the Blue Fairy returned to him, “You must go to school each day and return home at night and learn what it is to be a real boy.” He had only one single day in school before the little girl took him for her father the puppeteer, but he felt he learned a lot. He remembered the schoolhouse, the children, the kind, but mocking eyes of the teacher. Remembering the teacher’s laughter, he became angry. The teacher was wrong to mock him, he thought, and he became so angry that both his right and left arms dropped off from his torso to the floor beneath him.

What happened next, Pinocchio was not ready for. The puppeteer opened the door entering the wagon and found him there so incapacitated. “What are you doing!” yelled the puppeteer, and he grabbed Pinocchio by the torso in one hand and squeezed him almost to crush him and shook him so violently that his head popped off. Pinocchio was frozen with shock. What’s more, a piece of his torso where his head bounce back and forth atop it splintered off. The puppeteer was so greedy he could only think of himself. Pinocchio’s frame was badly damage. And for the puppeteer, there was only a short time until the show was set to begin. Pinocchio hadn’t even been instructed on how he would sing and dance. “You selfish little punk!” he bombasted.

Pinocchio felt so sorry for himself that he began to weep as the puppeteer tied his head and arms back onto his torso with copper wire. “Good… good,” said the puppeteer.

The boy

He went out there… on stage. There were lights upon him. All the people gazed up at him. The audience, expecting him, unsure what to think- blank faces and eyes. One man was drunk, obviously. A woman with a baby in a stroller, too, was there, and a man aside her in a top hat, appearing unsettled. But the woman stayed him, her hands sure but light upon the rail, face set upon the stage- upon Pinocchio. And a hundred others stood on. Pinocchio’s eyes squinted to see all of them- each face, each life, looking at him. “All these for me??” Pinocchio’s inner voice thought. “Well… gosh!”

He stammered out a few steps further on the stage. People became curious; Pinocchio became curious in return. “Why are all of you looking… at me??” he said, obviously innocent. Many in the crowd, surprised by his self-expression, laughed aloud and their laughter rode back on him like a wave that rocked him to and fro. Usually, he hated laughter. But he was so curious with these people before him that his mind was sewn to them.

“What would they do next?” he wondered, as their faces expressed him, elevated him to new adjectives, expanded his meaning, created him anew in the electricity of curiosity in their eyes. Pinocchio was created by a poor puppet-maker in a candle-lit woodshop only three weeks ago. The love his maker gave him was warm and kind, but not real. What this crowd of folks reflected of him was, as he felt, the whole of his potential- what he is, and could be. His mere thought, expressed, delighted them.

“I was wondering if you’d like me,” he said aloud.

The crowd, the whole of them like a single mind, awakened with every word from him. Laughter, whistles, cheers. “We like you, Pinocchio!”

“They know my name,” said Pinocchio, to himself, in his mind, with his own voice. “I must honor them.”

“How did you know my name?” he said, thinking his first thought, saying his first thought, believing all of himself and being believed by all. Laughter kissed him a hundred times per second.

“It’s on the edge of the stage!!” one shouted, gurgling laughter out her mouth.

“The edge of the stage?!” asked Pinocchio, who moved his own feet left/right and left/right and left/right over to the edge of the stage.

“Down! Look down!” a man shouted, his belly convulsing with laughter.

Pinocchio was thrilled and curious and he felt real, at last. His every decision, acted upon, thrilled him through and through. He bent from his waist and craned his neck downward to see how his name looked. The word, upside down and backwards from his view, was unknown to him, but something inside of him knew that they were letters (just like the two letters he learned… in school… the A… and the B as in Boy (what he really is) (and if he continued going to school, he realized, he would understand this word he craned his neck to see, each letter and the whole of them, as his very own name). Intensely curious, now, he asked the crowd, innocently, “What does it say??”

Laughter roared from the crowd. Several shouted, “It says your name!!” Laughter, laughter, laughter.

Pinocchio, stunned within himself entirely, thought, and said aloud, “My name??”

“Pinocchio!!!” shouted the crowd. “Pinocchio!!! Pinocchio!!! Pinocchio!!!” thrilled and laughing and remembering, themselves, what it’s like to know nothing and experience all as new.

Pinocchio, more curious than pleased, craned his neck and rode the trail of letters from beginning to end with his eyes, “P-i-n-o-c-c-h-i-o…” he said whistfully, whimsically.

“Left to right!!” broke through the laughter in a man’s heart, showing Pinocchio with his hands.

“Left,” Pinocchio spake to himself, aloud enough for others to hear, acknowledging the great law of ‘Left’ in his enlightened understanding, “to Right,” he completed, understanding the difference between the two in his heart. The crowd, not knowing, was quiet, waiting. Pointing with his hand (on the leftward side of the stage (as it is viewed from the crowd) and moving his hand rightward, he said his name, as, he guessed, it was written beneath him: “Pinocchio?” he asked.

“Pinocchio!! Pinocchio!! Pinocchio!!” shouted the crowd, cheering, dancing, and throwing hats upon him so that he was toppled and hidden in a maiden’s straw hat with pink ribbon. “Pinocchio!!! Pinocchio!!! Pinocchio!!!” shouted the crowd, and the crowd itself pulsed with more and more curious people, like a heart pulsing and contracting upon itself with great pressure. “Pinocchio!!!”

He pushed out shyly from under the straw and pink-ribboned hat, aghast and amazed as the crowd cheered his very own name: Pinocchio.

The puppeteer and carnival barker, bounded outside to bolster himself in the crowd. His long, waxed mustache, his barrel-like chest and his booming voice shouted with the crowd alike, “Ladies and Gentlemen! This here before you, is a puppet and a real boy! His name is Pinocchio!”

The crowd, confused, but amazed, still, quieted and slowly rode off like many waves. “Real??” they asked their partners. “Did he seem real?” And another, “Was there a witch afoot?” And another, “What magic have I seen, this night? A puppet- a real boy- who spoke and asked about letters, words, and of his own name.”

“I am a real boy, “ Pinocchio said, loud enough for no one to hear, as their backs were upon him riding outward, toward other lights on the carnival grounds.

The crowd returned the following night- a few of the same folks, but many new. Pinocchio asked them from his pulpit, “What are you here to see?”

“You, Pinocchio!!” shouted a lonely man, obviously drunk, drinking since the night before. Pinocchio’s name sounded like a dirty towel, worn from many uses.

“Oh,” said Pinocchio. “What am I here for??” he asked the crowd, innocently, who told him: “You are here for us!!” “For us!!” shouted others in the crowd. “For us! For us! For us!!” shouted the whole crowd as one.

~Three months’ time has passed~

‘I am a prisoner, here,” Pinocchio affirmed aloud to everyone. “I am beaten. Every word not of my master’s pleasing, is beaten from my vocabulary.”

“Pinocchio, we would aid you, but we are poor,” said the crowd, “and the puppeteer owns a very large stake in the carnival, after you had made him rich. But may we speak with you as often as we wish? May we abide with you and ask and answer with you?”

“As long as I am prisoner, I love you, and will ask and answer with you, and abide. But if one of you withholds the safe path to my freedom, I no longer shall love you, or ask, or answer, or ever speak another word.”

They all agreed and each prayed within each own heart to honor his wish. One man, along the fray of the crowd in the back, wiped tears from his eyes, and said that he “had known for months.” He “heard the puppeteer on the telephone, inquiring about your father, the puppet maker who made you. I heard from the puppeteer’s mouth that your maker was lost among the continent, rending his heart up over every hill and pouring it out down into every creek and river with your name breaking in his throat.”

“Where is he now?” asked Pinocchio, suddenly ready to go.

Weeping, the man begged, “I asked about him, I hoped to help you but the puppeteer made me quiet. He knows too much about me. And he gave me several dollars worth of bread each week, with butter and salt and, occasionally, a fish. But I asked about your father for you, even though. One man told me he had heard from his mother that your father had been missing. She told him he went to the shore. But yet, another man, she told him, said that your father spoke to him on his way out of town with only a sack full of supplies and his boots. He said he was returning to the original place that you, Pinocchio, were born- the North Woods. There is a tree that grows, there- your body was hewn from a branch of it. He hoped to find you, if, on instinct, you would return there.”

“I will,” knew Pinocchio. “And thank you all.” Without a sound, he leapt from the stage and his feet felt the brown dirt of the carnival grounds. He ran off without the Puppeteer aware, but Puppeteer wouldn’t have known him, even still. The man who confessed this to Pinocchio began weeping and ran through mud with his belly bouncing over his boots to avoid ever seeing the Puppeteer, again.

Pinocchio began his long journey through the very forests he knew from his birth four months ago. His feet felt light and electrified as he moved across the earth. His father, the puppet maker, must be so worried, he thought, and at once, his heart struck at the thought and he became anxious. His feet quickened along the path through the woods and he became frantic, searching miles off in his mind for where his father must be, but his vision reached only in front of him. “Help!” he cried to God with a croaked voice that sounded like wetted wood. It had been a long time since he asked for God. God showed his face sweetly.

“Why so distressed, Pinocchio? My heart is sore to the bone feeling your heart in mine.” Pinocchio croaked and cried and croaked out his prayer, knees trembling on the wet ground- words no intellect could describe: the Croaking-and-Crying language of the distressed-hearted real boy of the North Woods.. “So great is your love, Pinocchio. Gippetto, too, has been through a tremendous journey in his searching for you. You might feel pleased with him, now.”

“I already am!,” said Pinocchio, crying out in want of him, angered bitterly if any treasonous thought betrayed his good feeling.

God patted his head lightly, amused. “It’s okay,” He said. Pinocchio wept bitter tears.

Pinocchio continued on his way. “Who’s Gippetto?” Pinocchio thought to himself, realizing that’s how God calls his father. “He must be just an ordinary man, like me, an ordinary boy.” “G-i-p-p-e-t-t-o,” sounded Pinocchio his father, the puppet-maker’s given name. “Gippetto. Huh,” smiled Pinocchio. His head and mouth filled with the vibrations of his father’s name. It gave him a feeling of joy. He laughed, knowing him, now, as simply a man, but a man with such magic in his lonely but loving heart that he wished a block of wood could be a real boy that could be a son to him, and it became Pinocchio.

Pinocchio’s heart, too, at this moment, ignited like a fire flair that reached all heaven in its breadth. His heart-flair tickled many angels’ bottoms and teams of cupids giggled in delight. Many bent to worship in the depth and strength of Pinocchio’s love, like drinking from a crystal stream in the deepest heart of the North Woods. Pinocchio laughed and laughed and loved and loved in thoughts about his father. His feet skipped as he thought and his arms swung as he laughed.

“May I walk with you, Pinocchio?” the Blue Fairy appeared, suddenly, drawn to his love, aware of his awakening, appearing, perhaps, too soon. Shocked by her phenomena, his revelry tore from his heart and he knew not in which direction to love. She knew, then, that her impulsive heart had made her clumsy, again. “I’m sorry!”

Pinocchio, unsure how to greet her, kneeled, as he usually did, at her feet. He felt strange doing this, now that he was basically a real boy, but he only knew her in this way. Amused and pleased, she shook her head and told him to stand and take her hand.

He felt very anxious, now, and his heart beat fully against his chest so that she could hear it like a deep drum. “Is it a wooden drum?” she thought, concerned. “Oh, dear,” she knew. He turned his head to her, eyes like silver dollars and his hand turned back into wood. She knew she had come too soon to ask him to marry her. “I’m so sorry, Pinocchio, I’ve come too soon. I jarred you from your revelry and you heart’s meditations. I’m going away, now…”

Pinocchio grabbed her arm desperately, his supple skin hardening everywhere. She had to rip her hand away. “No! It’s too soon! I will see you, again! I’m so sorry!!” and she flew up, away into the tree tops out of his sight. Pinocchio was very confused and he felt himself falling into despair. He stumbled over the forest, unaware of his direction. Owls’ hoots everywhere began preparing the forest creatures for night- a warning and a welcoming at once.

Slowly, the appearance of stars calmed him, opening their little eyes of light upon the indigo sky above the trees. The moon swung by and said hello, an old friend he knew from his many nights sleeping near the puppet wagon’s window on the carnival grounds. He began to walk easily, again, even though the bats squeaked in his ears and flapped their leathery wings so fast, reminding him of the eye-lashes of that young woman at the carnival as she flirted with a shy clown who could never open his voice to speak a single word to her. Remembering this young woman, and this shy clown, Pinocchio’s own voice relaxed and a sound that came out from his own heart through his mouth filled the Forest, whos’ many trees and creatures listened, peaceful as a purring cat.

Thoughts of his father returned to him like feathers of angels on his hard brain. The feeling of direction returned as he wished himself, unthinking, toward the place he was hewn. Magnetically, his heart drew him to the sacred tree. On and on, until he found himself, unawares, curled tightly embracing the limb of a small, woodsy thing, whose leaves had all dropped already; its dark, ashy limbs still surged with good green stuff, but it barely remembered Pinocchio.

Like a grandmother who had all but forgotten a lost grandchild, the little tree put its spectacles on and assured herself of their relation. “Oh, yes, yes, yes- alright, now, young one, alright. How have you been? You… look so different!” she laughed, to herself, uncertain of her manners in this unusual situation. “Last I remember of you… oh, it doesn’t matter!” she said, ignoring the memory of her insult when the axe chopped into her limb, apparently to be hewn into this… this boy?? She looked curiously at him, now. She took him by the shoulders and turned his face to hers forcefully.

He stood there in tears, naked faced, wanting of love. “Is it possible?” she asked. “Come, child, sit on my limbs. Let me share a secret thought with you.” Pinocchio did not wish to speak to her if she did not remember him. His heart hurt keenly. “Please. It’s alright. It’s alright, young lad! Come!”

Pinocchio reluctantly climbed into her limb-lap and sat. Her barky bosom brushed against his anxious face. He began to feel warmed and gentled. Their unity was transmitted to him- his hand on her limb had a feeling of no-difference, the essential sameness of his body and hers. Pinocchio felt a great relief, but also a consciousness of himself, as nowhere he had been on his journeys, and no one he had encountered, had shown him that they were the same as him. Always, there was a distinction, a difference, an edge. Here, his foot lay upon her and it was himself his foot lay upon.

“What’s the matter?” asked the sacred tree.  Pinocchio’s thoughts had begun to drift to his father; his heart ached to find him- as anxious as his father was to find Pinocchio.

Pinocchio told of his adventures in brief as the tree listened. “Quite a life I’ve had!” said the tree. “Is the world beyond the North Woods so treacherous as you describe? But so wonderful, as well? Tell me, again, about “school”? What is it you are learning there? It sounds very interesting to me.

Pinocchio traced with his finger the letter “A” on her smooth bark. “A,” he said, “as in ‘Apple, Aardvark, and… oh, I forget… Ants!!” “Ooh, ants!” she said. She liked ants. Then, he traced the letter “B” on her bark alongside the letter ‘A.’ This is a “B,” as in “Boy!” I! I am a Boy!”

“You a-a-a-a-are!” she was amazed. “Only four months ago, you were a branch of my body. See? That stump over here on my side? This is where the axe man, your father, bore you from me.” She seemed still to remember the event with a certain discomfort. “He had a peculiar feeling, so deep within himself as he worked on me- I let him do it- it felt like he needed it; it felt like it was important to him in some way.”

The tree sighed. “There… I feel a bit better about the whole thing, now. And you!!” she said, turning her face, brightening like a mirror reflecting the sun. “My bone; my sap. Just like the gentle earth has had the moon carved out of her by a space rock, you have been carved from me. You are my child, Pinocchio! So strange,” she mused, wisely.

Pinocchio’s heart opened and felt tremendous love for her. She was wise and knew about the Earth, about the depth of feeling in axe men, and she spoke beautifully about her thoughts. He hugged her tightly and felt himself being hugged, and hugged and hugged and hugged deeper and longer and more. He felt his limbs energizing. A milky fluid flowed into his body from her and both the tree and he felt immense gratitude.

“You were a little dry!” remarked the tree, who immediately replenished her milk supply through her roots.

Pinocchio stood, now, on her limb above the forest floor and felt his body, light and strong. More so, his heart felt wide and warm. “This is a good tree, who bore me,” he knew.

“To a certain extent, I feel I drew your father to me, Pinocchio. He was wandering around, this tree over here, that tree there, see, and none of them were having him. I think I invited him. I sensed his need. I wanted it, too. I’m so glad you have come to me. I feel larger than I’ve ever been!” As she spoke this, her limbs already were reaching out wider and wider into the air above her; her roots, already quite deep in the soil, dug deeper, able to be nourished by the soil way down. Several birds who had not previously made her their home, came to nest. Her heart pulsed like a deep drum. “What I had lost has made me large and strong,” she prophesized, her voice quivering with the rush of energy and power available to her, now.

On the branch nearest to the one Pinocchio was hewn from, several seeds had begun to grow. The winter had been wet and unusually warm. “Break this branch off of me and plant me after you have found your father and returned home.” Pinocchio obliged, but putting his hands on the branch, he realized he couldn’t do it.

“It’ll hurt a little bit, love,” she guided him. He pressed his body against the branch and he felt his own body begin to break, but when he looked down at himself, he was whole. “Doesn’t get any easier,” she cried, letting her tears and sap fall over the earth. Pinocchio writhed in pain. He held the broken branch with the seeds to his body, and it lessened the hurt.

“Get it home soon, love, before the sap dries. We’ll be together, always.” She brushed his face with the soft needles from a mossy branch. Her love penetrated him lightly. “Now! Where is your father! You must find him! He must find you!”

She sent her signal out into the surrounding forest and deep into the mycelium channels in the earth at her feet. Birds above sang out and insects buzzed quicker. What signals came back to them were dark, distressful, anxious words.

“Your father is in the lake. He should have simply found me, but he kept getting the signal to go around me, like something was misguiding him. He tried to swim the lake and was swallowed by the old fish .”

The shock of this news shown on Pinocchio’s face. Recklessly, he made to leap from her limb-lap and run out into the forest not thinking of where to go or why. When his feet felt the earth he was magically comforted and stilled. He would have run amok for hours finding nothing but death. “Take rest, sweet boy,” said the tree. She lifted her ear as messages were coming in. “Many fish from the lake tell us he is still alive… although they are not happy about it as he has eaten many of their brothers and sister. He brought a frying pan with him… oh, dear, me, poor things… and uses their predecessor’s fat as oil to fry them in! Oh, cruel man! His hunger knows no bounds! One after another fish gets caught as it enters the great fishes mouth and gets fried in the fat of their brethren… Are you sure this is your father?? You seem so gentle, Pinocchio!”

—-

Something was misguiding Gipetto as he searched for Pinocchio. It is so when anyone believes something that is a lie. The puppeteer had sought to confuse him, calling Gipetto away that day on the phone so he could sack Gipetto’s house of his magical creations. The puppeteer told him he would find Pinocchio on the edge of the lake, and when he didn’t find him there, he swam out, thinking the boy had been taken under. The great fish oped his mouth and drew in Gippetto, carving tools and folding bench in his sack of supplies and his lantern, whole. Gippetto swam his way to the side of the fish’s esophagus where the constant gulping in of water and fish would not pull him down further into the great fish’s digestive tract. There, he set up his workshop. He had his fishing pole, as well, and was able to cherry-pick from the copious meals the fish enjoyed as king of that lake in the North Woods. He waited for the fish to eat too much, and he would ride out his mouth on the back flow. It seemed, from the hours and days Gippetto watched, that the fish could not eat too much- quite the contrary. Gippetto tried to ignore the haunting cries of fishes who reached the fish’s stomach, whose little bones began to break apart. He became, after many weeks, darkly morose and wondered if he should throw himself in the fiery lake of stomach acid thirty yards beneath him. (Surely, this was a great (and terrible) fish, or so the original writer of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi,had him be!  A shark a mile long! Oh, what a magician, this man was! I have not met this fish myself- I can only take it on hearsay- or, perhaps I am in this fishes esophagus, now, writing these words, hoping, myself, to be expunged on the backflow of too much food, so I can live my life happily with my son, a real boy). Now, Gippetto’s mind, as before mentioned, was growing quite dark.  He even began to fantasize of this event.  “Falling,” as he named it wistfully in his mind.  If he should slip just so, fall down the fish’s throat and end his life in such horrible pain. Poor Gippetto!! How will he be saved?!!

He looked down and noticed his meal, a fish, was beginning to burn in the pan. “You should have let me to die nobly in the fire of the great fish’s belly!” said the burnt fish. “How ignoble it is to die in yours!” Gippetto’s brow furrowed as he observed this little fish, and then ate his head first so he didn’t have to hear the fish scream. “C-c-runch!!” said the fish, his last word.

Pinocchio saves the Lake of the North Woods, his father in it

Pinocchio, encouraged by the light, powerful love of the tree he was hewn from, went off toward the lake. In the distance, he heard the terrible screams of dying fish and the occasional water fowl who chanced too close to the surface near the fish’s mouth. Pinocchio had never heard the screams of beings dying. Only he had heard many sounds come out of many people’s mouths, some beautiful, some infuriated him, some made him feel terribly sad. “EEEEEEEE!!” screamed a school of fish, and then the snapping shut of the old fish’s jaws. “Sqwaaaaaaa—“ entered a waterfowl into the tomb-like mouth.

Then, through a small group of trees, Pinocchio looked down onto the valley the lake filled. The great moon was round and bright so that every detail was visible. The great moonbeams sparkled on the water of the lake below. He felt the cold, winter breeze brush his hair, almost soft on his head. And then the fish rode up, breaking the plane of water with a great leap- his body nearly half the length of the lake itself. Pinocchio’s heart jolted within him. “POPPAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!!!!” Gippetto heard the strange sound, a voice, a young boy’s voice, full and round, shouting for him- a call from the trumpet of Gabriel, the bugle of the cavalry come at last. It took Gippetto a moment to clear the cobwebs of disbelief from his mind. “Yes. Of course it is. YEEEESS MY BOOOYYY!!!” he shouted hoarsely through the amphitheater of the fishes opening mouth. Gipetto’s voice echoed over the valley, a grace note, concentric rings of sound working through the cold air, over goose wings and all manner of flying things, over the fur of bears, and thrush into the trees like a spirit. His voice reached Pinocchio’s ears and struck down into his heart. “POOOOOPPPPAAAAAA!” he shouted, but his feet already left him and his body had already hurtled into the air over the cliff above the lake. His arms like arrows above his head, he dove straight into the cold water and swam.

The fish eyed Pinocchio, having never seen a creature like him before, half human, half made of wood. For the first time in his entire life (1,000 years or more) the fish did not know what to eat. He just sat there a little bit, rolling left and right with his massive body, letting the water flow through his giant gills. The fish turned his head from Pinocchio, gnawing on the souls of poor fish doomed to swim near it. Pinocchio swam nearer, and the fish, for the first time in his life, backed a little away. Pinocchio held out his right arm, which was mostly still wooden, and showed it to the fish. The fish came near as if to smell, his great nostrils (each one twenty times as large as Pinocchio, himself) expanded and expanding, taking in each bit of Pinocchio’s smell. Nothing. Just some wet wood. No interest on the part of the fish, who turned his great head (the size of 9 school busses) to snatch the lives of two small schools of fish who happened to have been helplessly drawn to it’s mouth by the drawing force of its wake.

Pinocchio swam nearer. He took the flashlight the kind tree had gratefully given him. “You’ll need this,” she said. “It hasn’t been invented yet, but we trees have access to things that others don’t.” As the fish opened it’s mouth to feed yet again, Pinocchio showed the beam into that great hole and searched for his father. “Ppppoooopppppaaaaaaa!!!” Pinocchio blurbled through the lake water.

Gipetto could not hear him. He was too busy frying yet another fish, covering his ears so he didn’t have to hear it screaming or crying of the indignity of ending it’s life in his belly and not the great fish’s. Pinocchio swam nearer the opening  jaws and allowed himself to be pulled in, while hanging tightly to the less razor-sharp of the fish’s teeth. Water flowed strongly over Pinocchio’s body. He looked and looked until the water cleared from his eyes and there, not a hundred yards before him was his Poppa, grown extremely fat, eyeing a whole new pile of fish that had become lodged temporarily in the fishes gullet. “Poppaaaa!” Gippetto turned and saw Pinocchio, his son, more real than he had ever been. Pinocchio’s black hair was almost soft; his body, strong and light, swaying in the water that flowed around him, hanging there by one hand on the fish’s tooth, looking at his father with eyes of fire and love.

“Pinnocchioooooooo!!!!!!” Gipetto yelled! “Come and get me out of this fish!” Gipetto threw down his wooden folding table and stool, and his frying pan and supplies, at once into the fire of the fish’s belly below and made to run and swim toward Pinocchio. The wooden table and stool did not sit well with the fish’s appetites and it quickly halted all eating activities.

“God,” asked the fish. “What is the matter with me? Suddenly, I feel not very wanting of food and I do not know what else to do with my existence.”

“Little fish,” said God, “I understand. You have taken some things in through your mouth which would not sit well in your stomach.”

“What can I do, God? This hasn’t happened before. I thought I could digest everything in the world!!” The fish became quite a bit afraid and began to swim faster and faster, rocking the water to the shore in waves the lake had never seen. Pinocchio’s fingers cut into the fish’s sharp teeth.

“Let them out!” shouted God, over the anxiety rushing over the fish’s brain. “Stay your fear and let them out. You’ll feel much better.” The fish rolled to a stop and opened its mouth. Gippetto leapt across the fish’s tongue, stepping on the larger taste buds all the way across to where Pinocchio could almost reach him. The fish, however, could only be still but a moment and surged again forward. “Stay,” said God. “Catch your breath.” The fish gulped in a mouth of water that blew Pinocchio like a flag hung by his two brave hands. Gippetto, seeing his opportunity, reached for Pinocchio’s feet and hung on. Pinocchio, feeling his father’s hands on his feet, felt a surge of joy fill his whole body, and strength surged in him. His hands moved, tooth by tooth. He tried to grip them with the parts of his hands still made of wood, but they were more and more flesh and blood with every rung of the ladder of the fish’s tooth he took hold of. Bleeding for the first time, Pinocchio was both greatly proud and feared for himself and his father. Again, another tooth, as the fish jolted his great tail behind him, hoping to dislodge the puppet maker’s workshop from his belly. The wood came out from that lake of digestive fire and shot out straight toward Pinocchio and Gipetto, hitting their bodies full force and sending them out into the watery world outside of the fish. Pinocchio had his head hit by a carving tool and was very dizzy. Gippetto grabbed Pinocchio’s bloody hand and swam out away from the fish, who asked God why that man he had eaten weeks ago was still alive and very fat. “He wasn’t good for you, kind fish. Let him go,” said God with a wink to Pinocchio, who was starting to awaken. Incidentally, this encounter with Pinocchio began for the fish a total reevaluation of his life, to the great relief of all creatures who inhabit the Lake of the North Woods.

The fish swam away from Pinocchio and Gippetto, to fast from food and to be with only himself for a little while; he was quite a bit dismayed that he couldn’t digest a man. God shone down His face like the great full moon light upon the whole valley. Trees who had never seen such light absorbed Him in and began singing Hymns they had not before known. The valley and everything living in it hummed softly.

With a final swing of his fat arms, Gippetto pulled Pinocchio to the shore, staring down at the face of his son who, now, was a real boy. His heart broke open and he held Pinocchio there, his tears wetting both their wet faces. “You are a real boy! My son. My son. How can it be?”

Pinocchio’s face lit up as he lay there in Gippetto’s arms. “Just like the Blue Fairy said, Poppa! Go to school each day, and… well, I only went to school once… but, be kind to others and… well, I was pretty mean to that happy little cricket all the time… I killed him, actually… but… how’d I get real, Poppa?” Gippetto shook his head in amazement at his son, the real boy, who swam into the mouth of the most dangerous fish in the history of fishes to save him.

The Next Day

Pinocchio took the branch his mother, the sacred tree, had given him and planted the seeds in the ground in the front yard of Gipetto’s house. “We’ll always be together,” he sang in his heart. Came the Blue Fairy down, cautiously, now, seeing the heart of her love brightening like the morning.

Pinocchio, startled, fell behind another tree and put his face out to greet her. The Blue Fairy’s feet landed on the soft, dewy grass. She bowed her head meekly, as dogs might do so as not to startle a friend. “Sweet friend, why do you hide? I’m so sorry for coming so soon that time,” and she softly glided over to him, allowing the tree to stand between them, allowing the bark to meet her bosom. In her aura, Pinocchio became happy, again. He held out his hand to her, meekly, like a small boy might. She took his hand and guided him to sit with her by that tree for a while and watch the winter pass, and the spring to come, and the little shoot from the mother tree come up gladly through the grass.

They sat and sat until summer passed and Pinocchio began the school year, anew. With fire in his mind, he learned the great truths of reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as many other lessons. He’d come home from school each day and help his father in his shop, and dance and laugh with the Blue Fairy as often as could be.

And he and his Blue Fairy found their own place after Pinocchio graduated. They had three children, all of whom could fly as they pleased, and each could speak eloquently of many things from each their own perspective, each knowing the sound of each their own voices in each their own minds. Amen.